How Yeshai Met Lital

Lital Mosan happened to be in the right place to find her future husband. All she had to do was go to work every day.

Lital was working in the mayor’s office at the Jerusalem City Hall. For months, she would enter the pretty stone municipal complex and greet the security guards on duty. It was just “hello, hello” each time. Security guards – many of them young and unmarried – are omnipresent in Jerusalem. They are generally seen but not often noticed.

Things changed when Lital was talking in the hall with Bat-El, a volunteer at the municipality. Bat-El had become a friend, one who also knew the security guard Yeshai Gordon. It was in September 2011. Both women and the young man happened to be together at the same time. In a very casual way, Bat-El introduced Lital to Yeshai. “I wasn’t trying to be a matchmaker,” she says.

“That’s when, I started noticing Lital,” says Yeshai. “And looking for opportunities to speak with her.” He thought it would be easy to ask her out since they had been introduced and worked in the same building.

Lital says it wasn’t so easy. “When you work in the mayor’s office, you don’t have much time for dating. You’re always busy.”

Yeshai didn’t give up. Finally, the two went out for a first date – to the trendy Mirror Bar, about a 10-minute walk from the municipality.

Yeshai, 27, was born in the city and grew up there. Lital, 29, chose the city’s Hebrew University to earn her first and second degrees in Arabic and Middle Eastern studies.

Their families come from very different backgrounds. Yet the couple found they enjoy many of the same things – movies, eating out at restaurants, bowling, and parties. “Yeshai is full of life,” says Lital. Yeshai says he fell in love with Lital’s smile.

“We were committed to each other almost from the beginning, but we wanted to take things slowly,” says Lital. Almost a year to the day of their first date, they returned to the same site, and Yeshai proposed.

The planning of their wedding included the traditions of both families. Yeshai’s parents had moved to Israel from the United States – his father, from Detroit; and his mother, from New York. For Yeshai’s mother, this was to be the first of five sons to get married. It was a treat to give her daughter-in-law-to-be a bridal shower.

Lital had never heard of a bridal shower. Her family, with its roots in Syria, had its own pre-wedding customs. The essential event for bringing good luck to the new couple, the henna party is a favorite. Henna leaves are a natural red dye, which are made into a paste and used to paint ornamental designs on the hands of the bride and her friends. It is a fun evening of merrymaking. “We had a blast,” says Lital. There was no need to hire a henna party planner.

Good things happen in Jerusalem. That’s the slogan of the city. “We agree,” say Lital and Yeshai. They were married on May 22, 2013. Mazal tov!